Advertising and marketing often represents a significant on-going expense for merchants, i.e., sellers and/or providers of consumer goods, products, and/or services. Consequently, both merchants and providers of marketing and advertising tools are constantly looking for new ways to provide effective advertising to potential customers, i.e., consumers.
To this end, many merchants offer marketing programs and marketing devices, such as group discounts, coupons, promotional and/or discount certificates, price guarantees, and vouchers, to consumers in an effort to attract and/or encourage business.
Traditionally, marketing programs often used “hard-copy” marketing devices, such as coupons, typically in printed, form, that were distributed by various means, including, but not limited to: by mail; in newspapers; in magazines; in flyers and inserts; at store fronts and/or product displays; and/or as attachments to store receipts (i.e., printed on the back of a receipt or appended to a receipt).
More recently, marketing programs have used marketing devices in the form of “electronic media based marketing devices” using electronic means such as, but not limited to: networks of computing systems, including public networks such as the Internet; mobile networks and computing systems, such as smart phones; various advertising/coupon web-sites; e-mail; electronic coupon attachments to electronic receipts; and electronic coupon attachments to transactional data, such as, but not limited to transactional data from, and/or displayed by, banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions.
In addition, even more recently, “mobile coupons” have become increasingly popular. Using mobile coupons, a marketing device is provided that is a type of electronic media based marketing device made available to, and/or delivered to, a consumer via a display device on one or more mobile computing systems, or other mobile devices. In many instances, once a mobile coupon is made available, or delivered, to the consumer via the display device, the mobile coupon is also presented to a seller of products and/or services, and/or is used, by displaying the mobile coupon to a merchant via the display device on the one or more mobile computing systems, or other mobile devices, or by another form of data transfer.
In other cases, marketing programs include recurring purchase-based programs whereby a consumer who makes a defined number of purchases, or spends a threshold amount of money, is provided a discount or other marketing program benefit.
Many marketing programs offer significant discounts to the consumer meeting the terms/requirements of the marketing program. Therefore, the marketing program can represent a significant expense to the merchant. Typically, the merchant is willing to incur this expense to meet specific goals, including, but not limited to: to help build up a customer base; to get consumers into a store; to retain customers who find a lower price for an item from a competitor; to lure customers away from a competitor; and/or to help clear excess inventory and/or to boost sales of a given product. In addition, many merchants desire not only to attract new and returning consumers but they also want to encourage consumers to spend more on their products and services.
In order to most efficiently use their marketing and/or advertising resources, merchants typically want to ensure their marketing programs, and marketing program benefits, are offered to, and/or distributed to, “high value potential customers”, i.e., consumers who are most likely to be motivated by the marketing device to make a purchase of a given product and/or service, and to become a “regular” or repeat customer.
However, currently, many marketing programs are offered to consumers who do not have the potential to become regular customers, i.e., are not “high value potential customers”. This is because, currently, merchants have little or no information regarding the spending habits of the consumers who are provided access to, and/or or invited to participate in, the marketing programs.
In addition, it often happens that a marketing program is offered to a consumer, and that consumer has one or more social contacts, i.e., associates/friends who are socially connected to the consumer, who would be interested in the marketing program and/or are “high value potential customers” who would be very interested in the given marketing program. However, in many cases, the consumer is either not aware that their socially connected associates/friends are high value potential customers of a given merchant who would be interested in the marketing program, or the consumer is not particularly motivated to make their high value potential customer associates/friends aware of the marketing program. This is largely because current processes/methods for informing socially connected associates/friends of a marketing program are far too burdensome for the consumer, rely far too much on the consumer's memory and ability to identify potentially interested socially connected associates/friends, and are far too subject to human error and chance.
Theoretically, social media systems, such as Twitter™, Facebook™, MySpace™, Linkedin™, etc., offer merchants a powerful mechanism for relaying information about their businesses, and/or products and services, and/or for providing marketing programs and offers. However, currently, it is difficult to identify high value potential customers and/or consumers who are customers of a given merchant, and/or consumers of a specified product or service, who are active, or have a presence, on one or more social media systems. In addition, even when customers of a given merchant, and/or consumers of a specified product or service, who are active, or have a presence, on one or more social media systems are identified, it is an even more difficult problem to motivate those identified consumers to share information indicating they are taking part in a marketing program, and/or have made a purchase from a specified merchant, and/or of a specified product or service, with their social connections or on a social media system.
This is again a result of the fact that, in many cases, the consumer is either not aware that their socially connected associates/friends are high value potential customers of a given merchant who would be interested in the marketing program, or the consumer is not particularly motivated to make their high value potential customer associates/friends aware of the marketing program.
As a result of the situation described above, marketing programs are currently offered to consumers who are unknowns, and are often not identifiable as high value potential customers. In addition, even when a consumer is identified as a high value potential customer, or existing customer, opportunities to access socially connected associates/friends of the consumer that are also high value potential customers are missed.
What is needed, is a method and system for identifying groups of socially connected consumers who are also high value potential customers; making the socially connected consumers aware of, and offering the socially connected consumers the opportunity take part in, a social group-based marketing program relevant to a common interest or spending pattern of the socially connected consumers; and then motivating the socially connected consumers to take part in the social group-based marketing program.